2011/06/26

Today I took a day off and decided to visit the island of Roche.
It is sparesly populated and the few buildings scattered across the island have a worn and weatherbeaten look to them. The local bakery (seen in the background) also runs a free bike rental service for tourists. I took a stroll down to the lake instead and had a charming picnic, accompanied only by a few sheep who did not take any interest in me at all.

Time flew by as I lay idle, reading a cheesy novel instead of medical textbooks for a change, and way too soon it was time to return home. Not willing to accept this beautiful day was over already, I kicked off my shoes, sat down at the pier and watched as the sun slowly disappeared behind the horizon.

For this week's outfit, I chose a light, feminine look. Both the light pink shirt and the pumps are from Berries Inc. The lovely, elegant Belinda pumps are the current Lazy Sunday item, each pair is only L$ 60!
I combined both with a pair of white capris, that were part of a former group gift from Cilian'gel. I don't think, it is still available, but Cilia Shepherd always has a little something for her group members up her sleeve and a large selection of outfits for just L$ 10.
The white hoodie jacket from Grixdale was free for the SLB8 celebrations for a very limited time. They are available in different colours for L$150 each. I'm also wearing my old favourite necklace from Bare@Rose, which I blogged here. I think this is a very versatile look, somewhere between classy and casual.

2011/06/25

May I introduce you to Theodoré? He is a distant cousin of mine, from the Canadian part of the family. The Constantines are a large family and I've only met a couple of my distant relatives so far. It was a pleasant surprise when I learned, Theodoré moved into town. He's a couple years older than me, but still studying, more or less. It seems, he keeps himself busy with other things than his books most of the time. He nevertheless accepted to help me and my little blog out whenever I need a male model. I hope, we will see more of him and learn a bit more about his life in future posts.

While Theory is quite able to pull off a tomboyish look, I figured it would be nice to have a male model for the blog as well. Good free or cheap items for men are quite rare, so I think it is worth to feature them.

The new group gift from Belleza came in quite handy. Joining the group isn't free, but enables you to pick up several male and female skins of great quality, so it is worth every L$! I guess, the new Ashton skin will be all over the blogs right now, but I just love this mature, masculine look and created a custom shape that hopefully does it justice. Theodoré was born.
He is different from the average male in SecondLife. First of all, he has a realistic body size, he is 1.92 m (6'3"), which makes him look tiny compared to most avatars, male or female. Secondly, I tried to make sure he is handsome, but not "perfect". His face is a tad bit asymmetric. He also has a slight stomach and a hint of body fat, instead of being either thin as a needle or consisting of nothing but muscles. This may might it harder to fit attachments to his shape, but at least in my book, he looks more realistic and likeable this way. I'm going for a well-kept look with rough edges on purpose. And of course, I'm going to stick to the general nerdy theme as well. I hope you like Theodoré, all I know is, I do.

For his basic look, I ignored my shopping limit, and I am not going to count it against my budget either.

To get a "feeling" for this character, I put together two different outfits, mostly from current hunt gifts and freebies. The second MENstuff hunt is only going on for about another week, but the new MENstuff lounge features permanent gifts from a lot of designers that are in the hunt as well. In order to be able to pick up both hunt and lounge gifts, you have to be a member of the MENstuff group, but joining the group is free.
I also just love the I <3 My Jeans from Acid & Mala. They look great, both on girls and guys and the sculpted bottom parts match the texture layers very well.
[ hoorenbeek] just released new gifts for their subscribo-group members. You have to be on the subscribo for at least 14 days to be able to receive the gifts.

I should add, I tinted the hair and modded it slightly to match the skin's hairbase, instead of using the tattoo layer one.

I used my friend's photo studio, poses used are from *EverGlow*, :snooky's: and BeScene. (all of them former hunt gifts, as far as I could tell. I couldn't track down Tristan Shuffle's store :snoOky's:, the Picks in the creator's profile lead to different shops or empty places).

Since I decided to "cheat" a bit in order to get Theodoré just right, I still have L$ 119 left for shopping.

2011/06/23

It has probably been through all the blogs that 1st Act are having a simwide hunt, but being the geek I am, I couldn't resist to write my own post about it.
The prizes are four full avatars of popular video game characters: Big Boss and Solid Snake from Metal Gear Solid (not shown) and Squall and Lightning from Final Fantasy. Lightning is the only female character, but all of them are very well-made, with lots of detail and come as full avatars, including outfits, shape, skin, hair, eyes and even some gestures. Each box also includes an updater card that allows you to get future updates of the avatars.
To get the avatars, you have to pick up a HUD at the 1st Act mainstore and wear it (there is one HUD for each of the avatars). Each HUD needs to be filled with seven shards. When you click an empty shard on the HUD, you will receive a hint where to find it and in which area of the sim (the store, the city or the wasteland). Use the teleporters in the mainstore to get down to the city and wasteland. When you have found the item the hint leads to, you have to click it and it will spawn a shard you have to click to collect. Once you have found all the shards, you will receive a teleport back to the store where you can pick up your prize. The hunt was really fun and not too hard. Despite the sim being packed with people, the scripts worked very well and I didn't have any trouble at all. Just make sure you wear only one HUD at a time when collecting the avatars.

The picture shows me dressed up as Lightning (using my own shape, skin, eyes and tattoos) and Corvus Szpiegel's character Ion dressed up as Squall (using his own shape, skin, eyes and hair). We fooled around a bit with poses and came up with this. It reminded me a bit of classical fighting games like Street Fighter 2, and I tried *coughs* to add a bit of a game interface to the picture. And no worries, I didn't hurt him.

2011/06/17

Please excuse the pun. I'm quite excited today, though, both because this really cute doll avatar cost me just a dollar (as in L$ 1), and because I finally managed to do something different than my more or less nerdy casual style.
As you can see in the picture, I'm a bit exhausted by now. Hunting for the outfit was easy enough, but finding a good spot for the photo wasn't, especially since I am currently experimenting with Firestorm. The beta is a lot more stable than the preview version, but I crashed several times before I was able to take this pic. I won't complain, though, since it is still beta.

Now to the outfit. The hair is from Crimson + Clover. As far as I know, the store sadly closed inworld a while ago, but some of her stuff is still available on the marketplace and this hairdo is can be found in two shades of red for a mere L$ 1 at Savoir Hair. For those of you who are not familiar with the place: a lot of hair designers offer a sample of their products there, either for free or L$1. It's perfect for new residents to get legit, quality hair and there are a lot of styles to chose from. One hint about the hair: it has a ton of scripts in it you don't need. Let Tools->Remove Scripts in Selection run over it a couple times to get rid of them. The rest of the outfit is actually from the Marketplace. If you scroll down on the marketplace main page, then click on "Best Selling Products", enter 0 and 0 (zero, null) into the text fields for price range and click on "Refine Search", you will get a selection of the most popular items that are entirely free! Some of it might be land listings and you will sure see a lot of demos, but there are some real gems there, too!

Ahem... rant ahead:
The lowest predefined price range is L$0-10, and I've seen a lot of people call these "freebies", but personally, I refuse to call anything free that isn't. Maybe I'm just weird that way. It's not that I mind to pay for a nice item, cheapie or not, but if it's not free, don't call it freebie, please. I've seen so called freebies for up to L$100, and that kinda makes me feel as if someone is trying to rip me off, no matter if I actually want the item or not. They promote it as free, yet I am supposed to pay for it, even if L$100 isn't that much in RL currency.

Ok, rant over. Sorry, but I just had to say this before finishing this post with the breakdown of my doll avatar:

2011/06/15

Hey folks! I know it's been a while. I couldn't spend as much time on the grid as I wanted to.
But here I am, with a new budget-friendly outfit. It's more summery than the local weather would allow - all we get is humidity and thunderstorms and rather chilly mornings. Hence I am still wearing long jeans and even donned a scarf, which looks quite glamourous along with my sunglasses, and of course the big summer hat with wavy blonde hair by Kletva. I discovered this store through my recent visit at The Dressing Room BLUE. Even if blonde usually isn't my colour, I fell in love with this hairstyle the instant I saw it. The Heidi top is from Berries Inc. and again a bit unusual for me, but I like to show my girly side, too!
With this slightly vintage look I could easily mingle with all the wannabe top models and film stars around... ha, as if I wanted to! Instead, I took a relaxing stroll along the beach below the village of Verdigris. The quaint village, nestled on a cliff and a bridge, with its small shops is well worth a visit, just as the pier on the other side of the sim and the bay below the bridge, where I stopped to take my picture.

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